From The Grio — For some, hip-hop was both the child of politics (think Reagan counter-revolution) and the parent of politics (think the United States Social Forum). Others make the claim that hip-hop isn’t just not political, it’s markedly apolitical. And yet others claim that it is the greatest internal threat facing black America.

I’m a child of hip-hop. I remember the first time I heard “Rapper’s Delight”, the first time I heard Run DMC, LL Cool J, Rakim. I remember my first pair of turntables, and still have my first mixer. But I also remember Ice T and NWA’s records predicting the Rodney King riots. Similarly, I remember Bill Clinton’s 1992 attempt to use Sister Souljah as a punching bag, twisting her words to score political points with conservative white voters. Finally I, like many others, did double takes when we saw Barack Obama use hip-hop to defuse critiques that he wasn’t authentic enough, literally brushing his shoulders off when attacked by Sen. Hilary Clinton on the campaign trail.

These examples, and dozens of others like them, cause MCs, cultural critics, activists, pundits, and regular people to casually connect hip-hop to politics. Personally, I define politics as the competition over scarce resources (tax dollars, political positions, care), and as the attempt to shape the common sense notions we have about that competition.

While hip-hop isn’t inherently political, hip-hop, like all black popular culture, shapes ideas about black spaces, about black bodies, about black institutions, ideas that shape political attitudes and behaviors. The question isn’t so much about whether hip-hop is political or not. The question is what are these politics, and how do they work?

Until Obama’s election in 2008 we had some idea how whites used hip-hop to stoke racial resentment. Bill Clinton attacked Sistah Souljah in 1992 because he knew that attacking a black working class female MC would generate the derision he needed to pull conservative whites towards him and away from his opponents. For almost 20 years, hip-hop was used to drive white voters to conservative political candidates, to conservative political positions.

Article: “Bill Clinton’s 1992 attempt to use Sister Souljah as a punching bag, twisting her words to score political points…”
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Bill Clinton was way before my time (I’m not a big fan of either Clinton today) but I disagree with this statement. Dude may have been/be a draft-dodging, pot smoking, ho-bag but Sister Souljah came out her mouth dead ass wrong.

Maybe one “teachable” point the ‘Sister Souljah Moment’ should have conveyed is ‘Don’t come out your mouth making inflammatory public statements then play the victim, get indignant, and act as if you (or anyone else) is immune from public criticism just because you’re black, fancy yourself an “activist” or whatever.

No matter how this chick tried to walk it back and clean it up later, Sister Souljah was asked by a Post reporter (regarding the LA Riots): “But even the people themselves who were perpetrating that violence, did they think it was wise? Was that wise, reasoned action?” Her response was: “Yeah, it was wise. I mean, if black people kill black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people?”

Her words were not “twisted,” she was no “punching bag,” her statement was racist!!